


someday

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [65]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Baby-fic, Collab Week, F/M, Prequel, the baby isn’t actually in it, well kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 04:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14229270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Leo falls back into Mattie’s life unannounced, hoping to see his baby daughter.





	someday

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Finally](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/369609) by nachocheese-itsmycheese. 



> For Collab Week: a prequel to “Finally” by nachocheese-itsmycheese.
> 
> Should make sense on its own, but do go and read the original!

Sophie had taken her niece to the park, since it was a sunny afternoon and Mattie was busy with work. She sat in her flat, listening to how empty and silent it was without her daughter in it. Even the tapping of her fingers against computer keys couldn’t distract her from that absence.

It was funny to think that only two years ago, she’d scarcely been able to imagine herself with a child at all. Now, being without one, even for an hour or so, was what felt unnatural.

Mattie glanced over her laptop screen, at a picture on the wall behind it. It was a framed photograph of a sleeping baby, one pudgy hand curled up next to her cheek, the other tucked under her blanket. Her eyes were closed, the soft, pink eyelids hiding the piercing blue eyes she’d inherited from her father. It was unfair, really, how closely she resembled him. Sometimes Mattie wondered guiltily if that particular picture was actually all that good, or if she’d just chosen to display that one because it hid the most defining Leo-feature from view. The further he was from her thoughts, the easier it was to carry on.

It had been almost six months since she’d last heard from him at all. Leo was in the States these days, helping Athena Morrow with her research. He was still the only one of his kind, but Dr Morrow was convinced that with enough observation, she could figure out how David Elster had ‘resurrected’ him, and rework it for other head trauma patients. It would be a major breakthrough; it would rewrite whole fields of medical science. It also kept him well out of Mattie’s way, which was a bittersweet bonus. Part of her still loved him at least as much as she hated him, if not more. The balance was fragile, and tiring, and never-ending.

She finished fixing the faulty code she’d been asked to work on, and sent it back to her client, with instructions on how to check if their synth friend was responding to the update. That done, she was just about to click on the next email when the buzzer sounded, letting her know someone wanted to be let into the building.

She got up from her desk and pressed the intercom button, half expecting it to be Sophie, back from the park a little early. “Hello?”

At first there was no response. Then the intercom gave a crackle, and a voice that certainly wasn’t Sophie said, “Hi. It’s me.”

There was a pause. Then, “Can I come up?”

Mattie’s chest felt suddenly hollow, like a huge gulf had opened there, vast and terrible and able to swallow her whole if she didn’t do something to escape it.

“Leo,” she all but croaked.

Another crackle. “Yes,” he said, sounding hesitant, as though answering a roll-call for a class he hadn’t signed up for.

“I’ll come down,” she said. She didn’t want him in her flat. She didn’t want to be enclosed in this space with him. Not because she had ever feared him or what he could do or say to her, but because this was her place: the home she shared with her daughter and no-one else, that had a bed Leo had never slept in and a door he’d never so much as knocked on. It worked for her because he wasn’t part of it. If she let him inside, even once, the trace of him would never go away. She wouldn’t put herself through that.

Mattie grabbed her keys from the hook and left the flat, pausing briefly outside the lift, but then drifting past it in favour of the stairs. She was four floors up. She would take the small delay, and use it to attempt to gather her thoughts.

Why was he here? What could possibly have brought him to her block, after all these months of silence? If there was any big, awful news in the family, she would know via Mia or Max by now. Surely he wasn’t here to apologise, or ask forgiveness, or any of those things she’d given up hoping for sometime between the start of her third trimester and the sound of a newborn cry. None of that was ever going to happen. They were always going to be unfinished, and she’d learnt to call the frayed endings ‘closure’. It was healthier that way.

Mattie’s heart was beating far too fast for just four flights of stairs, by the time she reached the bottom. She couldn’t pretend it was the physical exertion. Talking to Leo was, somehow, both the last thing she wanted to do, and the thing she wanted most in the world. Why did everything with him have to be a duality, a contradiction in terms?

She made her way along the hallway, her stride several times more confident than she felt inside. Eventually she reached the door, and she gave herself a final second to prepare before opening it.

He wasn’t on the doorstep, as she might have expected. He’d retreated to the bottom of the path that lead to the block of flats, hunched over, his hands in his pockets. Looking as he so often did, like a fish out of water, cut adrift from everything. He looked up at the sound of the door opening, and their eyes met across the short distance between them.

Part of Mattie wanted to stand her ground, and force him to be the one to close the gap, but part of her didn’t want to associate him even with the outside of her building. She went down the path and met him, fixing him with her coldest glance as she did so.

“What do you want?” she asked, bluntly.

He didn’t answer. Instead he looked about her, as if expecting her not to be alone. “Where’s…?”

She noted with hostility that he couldn’t even bring himself to say his daughter’s name. “She’s not here,” Mattie said.

Leo’s eyes widened slightly, but whatever he was wondering, he didn’t voice it.

“She’s out with Sophie,” Mattie added, before she could stop herself. She refused to wonder if her subconscious had taken pity on his obvious confusion. “Did you want to see her?”

He nodded. Mattie was taken aback, but she tried not to show it.

“Both of you,” he clarified, voice somewhat hoarse. “I wanted to see both of you.”

“Well, come back in an hour,” she said. “Or meet them at the park. Whatever you want.”

“You don’t mind?”

Mattie’s eyes flashed with fury. “ _Mind_?” Her throat felt tight and strained, but somehow the words forced themselves out regardless. “It was never _me_ who wanted her to grow up without a dad, Leo. That was you. I’ve wanted her to see you every single day since the moment she was born. I don't—” She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. “I don’t personally believe that you _deserve_ to see her. But I’m not going to stand in the way of my daughter seeing her father. She deserves that much, even if you don’t.”

She turned away from him. She’d said too much already, less than two minutes in - the conversation wasn’t going to end with a civil handshake now. She wished he would leave. She wished he would stay. She wanted him to never come back and never leave her side again. Most of all she wished she’d gone to the park with Sophie, and left an empty flat for him to ring up. She would never have even known he’d been here.

“I thought I’d left it too late,” he said. He cleared his throat, a strangled sound. “She won’t remember me.”

“And whose fault is that,” Mattie said bitterly.

“Mine,” he said, without hesitation. “Obviously, mine. Everything has been my fault. I don’t expect anything from you, I just… had to ask if you’d let me see her again.”

“Well, I’ve said you can. I’ve told you how. Is that all you came for?”

“No. I… want to try. I want to try and… be something, to her.”

“ _Something_ ,” Mattie repeated sourly. “As in ‘better than nothing’? How about just being her father?”

“I…”

He trailed off completely. Long moments passed before he spoke again. “I was wrong before. I said I never wanted to be a father, but what I meant was that I didn’t want to be _my_ father. I think you knew that. We had that long argument about frames of reference, but I wasn’t hearing you properly. I couldn’t… I just kept coming back to all the ways I’m exactly like him. Do you know how often I’ve wished he’d just left me at the bottom of that lake? I couldn’t see myself doing any better than he did.”

“So you decided to punish our daughter for your own insecurities,” said Mattie. “This isn’t news, Leo. I’m not stupid. I don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know you’ve got issues with the concept of fatherhood - it would be weirder if you _didn’t_. But you can’t just…use that as an excuse. It’s not her fault. It’s not _my_ fault. But you left both of us.”

“I know,” he said. “I shouldn’t have run away, or said any of the things I said. I don’t have any justification for that.”

“So what’s changed?” Mattie folded her arms in front of her. “Why show up now?”

“I realised I was wasting Doctor Morrow’s time,” said Leo. “She wanted to study my memories, the way they’re ordered and how the recall works. I let her see some of them. The old ones, from… before. But it was the newer files she was interested in, how my brain creates new paths for itself. And I wouldn’t let her see them, because I didn’t want to look up on that screen and see… you.”

Mattie pressed her lips together, and stared down at her feet, giving him nothing.

“I’d closed off everything about you. I hadn’t even realised I could do that. I don’t think I ever could before. When we first met, I told you I was unable to forget, and that’s still true, but I realised only recently that I can partition off whole sections of data. Like moving them to another drive. It’s something to do with the grafts Athena put in after… after Hester. There’s still a disconnect. Everything I didn’t want to think about, I was transferring across so that it wouldn’t keep surfacing, and that made all her research pretty much defunct, because she wasn’t trying to replicate a repair that went wrong. She wanted the real thing, and I couldn’t let myself show her it, because that would mean… admitting that I’d been avoiding even thinking about you.” He kicked at a stray stone on the path in front. “So I told her I was sorry, and I caught the next flight. The others don’t even know I’m back in England.”

Mattie stood there, stock still, taking in what she could.

“You asked me what changed,” Leo continued. “And I suppose what I’m trying to say is… nothing changed. All this time I kept thinking I didn’t need you any more, but none of it was true. I just wasn’t letting myself remember. It’s all the same as it ever was.”

For a while there was silence between them. A breeze whipped Mattie’s hair over her shoulder, and she raised her hand to swipe it away from her face. She tried not to notice the dampness on her skin as she did so.

“It _isn’t_ the same,” she said softly. “It’s two years later. We can’t just… pick up where we left off.”

“I know.”

“I meant it when I said I won’t stop you seeing her. But please don’t make her any promises if you’re not going to keep them. Just… spend some time with her. But not here. Her home is for people who are permanent.”

Leo nodded. “Okay. I’ll… think of something.”

“I really wish I could just say I understand,” Mattie said, honestly. “And that we can try again. But if…”

She shook her head. “No. I’m not going to start any ‘ifs’ today. Give me some time to work those out.”

She dared to look at him again, and wondered if she saw a glimmer of hope in those eyes. She had grown unaccustomed to reading them.

“I think you should go, for now,“ she said. “I’ve got to process some of this without you standing there.”

“Of course.”

“And…I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Mattie added, “But it was good to see you. I think I’ve been doing a bit of memory partitioning myself.”

The corner of his mouth twitched upwards, a sad quarter-smile.

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“A B&B in town. Just until I find out if Max and Flash can put me up.”

Mattie nodded. “Get Max to let me know, if they do. I can bring her over to theirs whenever you’re ready.”

“Alright. I will.”

He met her eyes again. “Thank you. For giving me a chance.”

“I’m only doing it for her,” she reminded him, although she wasn’t sure how true the words were, even as she spoke them.

He would have to work a lot harder and longer than this, that was for sure. But maybe there was a reason the ends had frayed so wildly, like they’d always been meant to knit back together. Someday. Somehow.

Perhaps it wasn’t too late, not just yet.


End file.
